Changes of Photography today

The power of the photograph

In today’s modern world of technology, photographs you see on printed media or online most probably have been manipulated. Before this, what you capture on the camera is what you get, it might not work the same way now. Today, with the dawn of inexpensive software, the manipulation of digital images is easier, faster and harder to detect. (The Christian Science Monitor, 2009)

“Photography we see in films, books, and periodicals is often stunning in its design, import, and aesthetics. It may also be fake, enhanced, or manufactured by emerging digital technologies that have transformed”. (K.Browser, 1998) This of course, which ethics are put inside are arguable as there are strong arguments whether to make the picture for the benefits of the people or for making it into the front page of medias.

One issue for example; Lebanon in 2006 was at war with Israel. Photographers and journalist go the extra mile to get their story as the headlines in Medias. In august, Reuters printed out images of what happens to be a bombing incident taken by photojournalist Adnan Haji. The picture, we can see that extra and thicker smoke were shown flowing up the sky, the alleged photographer, Adnan had used “clone” tool to copy portions of the smoke column and paste it in the sky, to make the smoke look more larger and darker. (Zombietime, 2006)


The manipulated photo


The original photo

Even though his manipulations really didn’t change the effect the photo to any degree, his claims was that he accidentally added the extra smoke to remove some dust fleck on the image. As it did not affect the photo to any degree, but it may have affected the people; in the first image, we can see smoke only came out from one building, but after photo manipulation, other buildings were on fire.

Photo “fakery” or digital manipulation has entered a new era; anyone with Adobe Photoshop basically controls the photography world. Even so, there are many literature reviews that study this cases and nothing much can be done as it is currently the new world of modern technologies. People see what they want to see, and the media are merely providing them with it. If audiences were willing to pay more for better content, why wasn't anyone already selling it to them? There was no reason it couldn't have been done that in the era of physical media. (Graham, 2009)

Reference list

Newsom, D, Turk, JV, Kruckeberg, D 2000, This is PR: The realities of Public Relations, 7th edn, Wadsworth Thomson Learning, United States of America.

Post-Medium Publishing, 2009, How they see it, Retrieved on 30 October 2009, http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html

The Christian Science Monitor 2009, Seeing is no longer believing, retrieved on 30 October 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0202/p15s02-lire.html

The Reuters Photo Scandal, 2006, online, retrieved on 30 October 2009, http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud

Controversial front cover

Apologies for the controversial Da Vinci cover by “Tempo”

According to ABC News (2008), one of Indonesia’s top news weeklies has apologised about the cover of its latest issue which depicts former president Suharto and his children in a composition mimicking Leornado Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

Tempo featured a sketch of Suharto taking Jesus Christ’s place in the middle and surrounder by his children and thus it trigged anger from Christian community. Below are the two images of Suharto with his children and Leornado Da Vinci’s Last supper


Image of Suharto and his family


Image of Leornado Da Vinci's Last Supper


Walsh (2006), argued that the social and cultural context of readers forms a good understanding as to why the majority of Christians were offended by the image while the magazine itself claim no pun intended. Adding to an apology by tempo, Chief Editor Toriq Hadad said, “we had no intention of hurting Christians. We were only inspired by the composition of the Leornado painting, and not in the concept or context of the event of the holy bible.”

The controversy in this image is also linked to the concept of centre and margin as propsed by Kress and Leeuwen (2006). In Da Vinci’s painting, the central element is Jesus Christ while his apostles form the margins. In a remake of the painting by Tempos, the centre is Suharto while the margins are his daughters and sons. These similarities could not have been more obvious.
Furthermore, Christians were furious because it was against the Christians believes and customs. BBC (2008), states that “A religion is a set of tenets and practices” that is why it should not be a copied or criticize about cause it is a cultural believe to people.

In my opinion, this was a misunderstanding and difference of social and cultural context. It is true that Tempo has to be blamed of putting case sensitive images for they have to care about its readers like Putnis & Petelin (1996) stated. Even so, a quick thinking by Tempo to release an apology and did damage control so that nothing serious will happen and creating havoc among people. It can now be hoped that for future publications Tempo will take certain things into consideration first.

Reference List

BBC (2008) Indonesian Weekly apologies over Last Suharto Cover, viewed on 23 October, 2009 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm

BBC (2008) Religions & Ethics- Christianity, Viewed 8th November
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/christianethics/euthanasia_1.shtml

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006, Chapter 6: The meaning of composition Reading images, Reading images, Routledge, pp. 175- 214

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Walsh, M 2006, 'The textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual, and multimodal texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29. no. 1, pp. 24-37.

New way for Media Publishing

New forms of media publishing

As technology rise rapidly in the world today, new media are being used more than print today. Some people explain the slow death of newspapers are caused by blogs and other online sources, there are little things print media can do other than lowering their prices.

The new media took steps out of the box, when previously media are controlled by gatekeepers, but online sources like blogging today there are no restriction on what you want to share in the internet.

Talking about the audiences, the changes in media consumption of publics affects the role of journalism but it benefits both. (Naughton, 2006) By giving the right information to what readers want, it also benefits the journalist by having a communication and interaction between both reader and journalist. Take Malaysia Kini for today, they serve news daily on their site, and comments and opinions from readers are put up as well with the specific journalist replying from time to time.

There is one slight problem in the new media, using Namewe as an example; he made a video criticizing the bad qualities of Malaysian and its people, posting it on you tube with approximately 500,000 views. With that video on the new main stream media has caught the attentions of authorities back in Malaysia. He was then asking to return from Taiwan where he was studying and proper judgement was given to him. There are pro’s and con’s of new media. Locally it is restricted while around the globe, there is total freedom of speech.

Reference list

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyiBvJtJ5Z4, viewed on 16 October 2009

Naughton, J, 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, Reuters Institute, viewed on 16 October 2009, http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf

Online Vs Print

Designing for online vs print

Online and print have different ways to broadcast news or messages to the people. They differ from type of media, audience, layout; color and etc.

Type of media

- Print media: (Newspapers, magazine, advertisements, products)

- Online Media: (Blogs, Websites, Social networks, emails)


Audience

- Print: The target audience are more generalised and creativity plays importance when printing out on print.

- Online: Designing for online have to stand out from the rest as there are many other sites out there that could attract the public and targeted audiences.


Layout:color

- Print: layout has to be arranged neatly and properly to catch the audiences eyes. According to Kress& Leeuwen (2006), readers read from left to right or right to left considering their cultural background.

- Online: Vibrant colors have to be used in layouts of an online design. Right colors and design, makes the audiences wants to finish browsing the site till the end.


According to Kress & Leeuwen (200), salience is a feature or some features of an element that makes it entrancing or the ‘degree to which an element draws attention to itself. In addition to that, Walsh (2006) said that responses in an audience are usually achieved by the choices of color, size, angle.

Reference List

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Walsh, M 2006, The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

Blogging, Creating and One Community

Blogging Community, Creating a Blogging Community and One Blogging Community

Blogging community is where bloggers that has common and specific interest blogs or also interaction between readers and bloggers. According to Nancy White (2006) in recent years, the ascendancy of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities.

There are three parts of blogging community as stated by Blogs and Community readings.

- Bounded communities – collection of blog hosts on a single site or known as social networking

- Topic centric community – communities grouped together with same/shared interest

- One blog centric community – an interaction and relationship between primary blogger and people around them.


Creating

With this three parts, one can create a blog by firstly knowing what genre or type they want to do, then registering on a free domain for blogs. The World Wide Web (www) has many informations on all types of blog, once a blog is created, links of other sites, postings, tagging of other people and also comments can be commented by readers and also be replied to.

One Blogging Community

Shown above are the types and parts of blogging communities. Using one blog centric community as an example; which our Ex-Prime Minister is currently doing. Tun Mahathir, Malaysian’s ex-premier is connecting with the public still, by using his blog. Interaction of all races as he uses two common languages in Malaysia. Notes or comments send to him are being replied from time to time. That is part of blogging community of a primary blogger and those around them.

Reference List

White. N, 2006, Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community? 11th edition, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed's Blog; http://chedet.co.cc/chedetblog/